Man with No Name: A Nanashi Novella Read online

  “A helpful talent in your business.”

  “Yes.” Nanashi shifted his gaze and all was again well with Muzaki’s face. “There are six bullets. I could fire them in the order of the danger my brethren present. Two for Amida. Two for Haru. If I were lucky, I might strike Jiki in the heart or neck and need but a single shot. That would leave Koma and Mizo. Could you cross the floor and take one of them before he gathered his wits? I would suggest Koma as he has fewer to gather.”

  Muzaki signaled. “Mr. Innkeeper, bring my friend and I a drink. Something strong. Something to fuck the past before it fucks him.”

  Nanashi’s drink came -- a cup of jet, pungent alcohol. “This is my seventh year sober.” He balanced the cup in his palm, then gulped the whiskey all at once. Sweet ever loving hell, it was good. He trembled. The innkeeper promptly poured again. “Uh, oh,” Nanashi said and made the booze disappear.

  “To the hells with sobriety.” Muzaki upended his cup into a mouth missing several teeth. “We cannot afford the luxury of a clear mind.” He removed a piece of paper from his pocket. He leaned across the table. His breath was foul. “Take this. It’s different from the bad one I showed your brothers. Keep it under your pillow when you sleep tonight.”

  Nanashi examined the paper. It had been crumpled and smoothed a hundred times. It was yellow and spackled with oil spots, or water stains. “What is this?”

  “The beautiful thing that awaits us all. Focus on the imperfections in the paper and slowly count to five. Then close your eyes, but gently, don’t squeeze them shut, and turn your face toward the lamp over there.”

  “I wonder what the point of this is.”

  “Haven’t you ever faced the sun and traced the veins inside your eyelids?”

  “Not recently.”

  “You’ll understand. Start counting.”

  “Perhaps now is not the time for riddles, Muzaki-san.”

  “Yes, it is. Here’s one -- I once had seven brothers. Like Saturn, father ate my brothers, but my mother was clever. She swaddled a suckling pig and fed it to him in my place.”

  “That seems more like a mystery than a riddle…or a joke of poor taste.”

  “Ha! And as Polyphemus was taken with Odysseus, your mirth delights me.”

  “You should decide between the Romans and the Greeks. Will you devour me last?”

  “Are you drunk already, brave Ronin? Come, indulge me. Look at the paper and count.” He gave Nanashi a friendly slap to help him concentrate.

  Nanashi concentrated on the blotches on the paper -- some were dark and sufficiently ominous to have escaped from some doctor’s inkblot book. He counted to five, then closed his eyes and tilted his face toward the lamp hanging near their table. Its light chased shadows across his eyelids. “Shit!” He caught the edge of the table to keep from toppling.

  “Most people see Jesus.”

  “Where did you get this? What is it?”

  “An American gave me one of those when I was a boy. He was one of my father’s associates -- a military person, I suspect. So many of father’s friends were, after all. We’d retired outside after dinner on a pleasant summer evening. The man asked me if I liked magic. He showed me a piece of paper much like this one, and told me what to do. My father wasn’t pleased. They had an argument and the man apologized. He winked at me behind Father’s back and let me keep the paper to play with, to show the other boys at school.”

  “I didn’t see Jesus.” Nanashi’s vision still swam red. “Or the Buddha.”

  “No? Not everyone does. What was it, then?”

  “The other one.”

  “You are the kindest of them. You are also the worst of them. It would be easy to love or hate you, Nanashi-san. That is why I am going to give you a rabbit’s prayer. My gift to a fellow traveler.”

  “A rabbit’s prayer.”

  Muzaki nodded gravely. “Remember not to fuck up when the moment arrives. You’ll have one chance.”

  “Huh?” Nanashi said. The booze was hitting him like a truck.

  “Hey, Nanashi!” Amida called from the bar. His collar was open, his usually immaculate hair was disheveled. “Come join us in the springs. Hurry up!”

  “Oh, do let’s,” Muzaki said as Amida staggered away through an open panel on the opposite end of the room.

  Through this side doorway and down some steps, they exited the lodge and made their way along a path to the timber bathhouse. Inside was a low-ceilinged cave Nanashi was sure he’d dreamt of before. Steam rose from an oblong pool. The bottom and sides of the pool were composed of smoothed, natural stone. Green and blue light rippled against the walls and the men’s shadows capered there, like silhouettes cast by a magic lantern.

  “In feudal times this was a sacred cave,” Muzaki said, and his voice resonated eerily and Nanashi had a flash of Kirk Douglas confronting the Cyclops in its lair. “It is rumored that powerful samurai travelled here to bathe in preparation for important battles and duels of honor.”

  Nanashi found the enclosure oppressive. The steam, the closeness of the walls, combined to evoke a profound disquiet. He watched his clan brothers splashing and wrestling, all of them inked in elaborate tattoos from the neck down -- their flesh crawled with snakes and herons and scorpions and mythical beasts, all in hues of red and green and black. Except for Jiki; he leaped in fully clothed, and his shirt billowed around his chest.

  “My manager threw a party for me here in 1987. This was before your clan took over the place. There were girls back then.”

  The house servants had been shooed away by Koma, so Nanashi undressed himself. He unbuttoned his shirt. He folded his clothes and placed them on a bench. He wrapped his revolver in a towel and set it atop the clothes. The water was the temperature of blood and it lapped at his throat. His own needlework was intricate and expensive, commissioned to one of the greatest tattoo artists in all of Japan. The others, especially Koma, were jealous despite the fact he’d earned the illustrations by dint of committing more violence than all but the most aged soldiers of the Heron.

  Nanashi never truly enjoyed his profession nor its magnificent rewards. He was simply ruthless; during conflict, remoteness stole over him, as if a hole had opened in his heart. Blood flowed, ink flowed. Violence and Irezumi, vines on a rail. Seven years of mayhem had afforded him a second skin more glorious than the infant first. He fantasized about the effort it might require to remove those layers, needle prick by needle prick. He wondered how much of himself remained underneath.

  Everyone stopped when Muzaki, frightful in his nakedness, waded into the pool until he mostly submerged, a massive bullfrog, exposing only his eyes and sloping forehead. He farted and bubbles wobbled to the surface. Jiki screeched laughter, and moments later the clan surrounded Muzaki. Muzaki reared, spitting streams of water at them, gently pushing them beneath the surface when they ventured within the span of his meaty arms.

  Nanashi’s nausea intensified. He turned his back to them and pressed his forehead against the slick rim of the pool. He saw the American actor driving the sharpened pole into the giant’s eye, again and again.

  * * *

  Koma assigned Nanashi, Amida, and Muzaki to a sleeping chamber. Amida volunteered for first watch, having shaken off much of his previous drunkenness. He produced a deck of cards and offered their captive a game of Uta-garuta.

  Nanashi lay upon a mat in the corner, listening to the whispered recitations of each waka until their voices diminished to white noise. He dreamed of kneeling on rice paper in the ornate home of dearly deceased Uncle Kojima. He was shirtless and the room was cold, but sweat already slickened the hilt of the Tanto knife in his fist. Light flickered from candles, obscuring the faces of his brethren, who gathered around him in funereal silence. Uncle Kojima sat in a padded chair several paces in front of Nanashi. Uncle’s chair had been situated directly beneath a hanging lamp. The old man was dressed in a conservative black suit. He rested an elbow on the arm of the chair, hand covering his mouth. Proba
bly to hide his smile. Uncle Kojima enjoyed pain and suffering. To his left was a small wooden table; on the table, a jar. Uncle Kojima caressed the jar; he slowly drummed his fingers on the metal lid.

  Nanashi looked down at the knife. He tried not to consider the jar as he folded his left hand into a partial fist, leaving the pinky exposed. He pressed the edge of the blade against the second joint and drew a long breath --

  -- he was flying over forested mountains, skimming treetops. Wind whipped his face and the light was flat and grimy. He landed in a clearing on a steep hillside. Moss-covered boulders strew the hill and continued into the brush. He took a step and something crunched under his heel -- a human skull. There were skulls everywhere; a vast, moldering carpet of them, and ribcages and leg bones mostly subsumed by the damp earth. Amid the bones lay rotted articles of clothing, backpacks, remnants of camp tents, tires from vehicles so old the rubber had melted. Dread overcame him, rooted him in his tracks, and he groaned. He knew if archeologists dug into this hillside they’d unearth a fossil record of carnage that burrowed into the yawning mouth of antiquity. Someone whistled from the trees; a soft, lilting tune that was answered from several hidden locations. The whistling grew louder, accompanied by cracking branches. Men wearing antlers, their bulky torsos covered in animal skins, shambled forth. They hooted and whistled a song he almost recognized; something incongruously popular, something urban, which made it all the more awful. One of the misshapen brutes waved--

  -- Nanashi plunged from a terrible height into water. At first he drifted in lightless depths, arms and legs spread loosely, and his previous panic melted, replaced by a sense of finality, of release. Gradually, his surroundings brightened, exposed by an unearthly, muted radiance that came from many directions at once. He followed the bubbles of his own escaping breath upward and saw an inverted bed of fleshy kelp, or soft, white tubers, swaying as the water in the jar sloshed. The white tubers had faces he began to recognize when a monstrously large hand, distorted by the curved glass walls, closed around the jar and all was dark --

  -- and Nanashi fell back into the sleeping chamber, frozen upon his mat. Someone in another room played a stringed instrument, plucking at the chords and humming the tune he’d heard whistled by the mountain phantoms.

  A single ray of lamplight filtered down to illuminate the prisoner Muzaki in profile, seated cross-legged near the door, head bowed to his breast. He wore a thick towel wrapped around his midsection and he twitched with each discordant note struck by the neighboring musician. Nanashi realized that despite the pain of his seized muscles, the hyper-clarity of his senses, this was another part of the dream. The music was a figment -- it faded in and out, yet Muzaki twitched in metronome and a cotton cloud muffled and nullified the chorus of snores, groans, and flatulence of the sleeping gangsters as they lay scattered like dolls beyond paper thin walls and sliding panels.

  Sound contracted around Nanashi, reduced to his thumping heart, his labored panting. A fly alighted on Nanashi’s cheek, drawn by his sweat, and just then nearby Muzaki’s arms flew wide and his head thrust back so the sinews of his neck were taut. A seam opened him, bisected his flesh from temple to toe. The man divided, skin and bone elongating until twin halves became separate wholes, yoked at the spine by a length of ganglia. Then each whole divided again and soon there was a daisy chain of howling Muzaki’s elongating toward infinity.

  Nanashi was paralyzed, yet fully aware, as blood poured across the floor and rushed toward his gaping mouth - -

  * * *

  The morning was overcast. Nanashi sat on the chilly terrace and ate a bowl of white rice and drank several cups of black coffee laced with brandy. Normally, tea was his preference. However, today was a coffee and liquor sort of day. The proprietor owned an espresso machine. He made the coffee into syrup, Turkish style, per Nanashi’s specifications.

  The rest of the gang were inside. Through the glass, he saw Koma slouched at a corner table, cradling his head and talking on the house phone. He was conferring with his bookie about the horse races -- he scribbled on slips of paper, hunting through his pockets every few seconds for more of them. Gambling was his particular area of expertise, although he’d never been wise enough to avoid becoming addicted to the very vice he peddled. He owed money everywhere and people had begun to whisper. Apparently the latest news wasn’t good -- he barked at anyone who came close. His voice barely reached Nanashi, as if he and the others were calling out from a distant valley.

  Amida and Haru stepped onto the terrace to smoke cigarettes. “Good morning,” Haru said. He lighted two cigarettes and walked over and handed one to Nanashi. “My head is swollen from too many drinks. I hardly remember anything from last night. Good thing you gave up drinking, huh? You could be suffering like me.”

  Nanashi smiled. He wondered if Koma or the maniac twins had noticed him downing liquor. Koma would be quite alarmed if he learned that his subordinate had fallen off the wagon. Koma might decide to cut his losses if Nanashi became so reckless as he’d been when they first rehabilitated him in the bad old days. Koma was looking for the slightest excuse. Nanashi didn’t really give a damn one way or the other. That bothered him a little.

  Haru’s face was doughy with exhaustion. He rubbed his eye. “I feel like shit, Nanashi. I didn’t sleep a wink. What about you?”

  “I slept like a baby.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Damn. I want to grow up and be just like you. You’re a cool customer. Nothing bothers you. Hey, Amida. How’d you sleep last night?”

  “Like shit,” Amida said. He looked as bad as Haru.

  “Me too! But our friend here, he slept the night through. Fresh as a daisy!”

  “He doesn’t drink. If I didn’t drink, I’d be fresh as a daisy too.”

  “Maybe I should give up liquor. What are you drinking?” Haru gestured at Nanashi’s cup.

  “Coffee.”

  “Yeah? Maybe that’s what I should do -- drink coffee, like you.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “What?”

  Koma yelled from inside, “Get Nanashi in here!”

  “Koma’s asking for you,” Haru said. “Could I try that?” He took Nanashi’s coffee and sipped. He made a face. “How can you drink this stuff?”

  “Where’s Muzaki?”

  “Jiki and Mizo took him for a walk. Muzaki walks two miles every morning. Wouldn’t know it from his looks.”

  Nanashi took Muzaki’s yellow paper from his pocket, careful not to unfold it this time. He stared at it a moment before lighting a corner with the tip of his cigarette. He held the paper at arm’s length and watched it burn to a crisp, its ashes scattered by the breeze.

  Haru said, “Did Muzaki show you the trick?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one where you stare at some spots and then close your eyes. I saw Buddha!”

  Koma shouted an epithet.

  “Koma wants you,” Amida said. He leaned against the rail so that his hair hung over the gulf. His voice was weak. “Please don’t piss him off this early in the morning. My head feels like a kettle drum.”

  “Your ass looks like two bongos! You need to exercise.” Haru slapped his own buttock for emphasis. “My girlfriend makes me work out with her to Bunz of Iron. She owns the whole series. It’s a miracle.”

  “You watch workout videos with your girlfriend?”

  “Why not? My ass looks great, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  Nanashi stubbed his cigarette in the saucer and walked inside. He sat across from Koma who was clutching a fistful of the betting slips. More lay on the table, while others had fallen to the floor.

  Koma’s bloodshot eyes bulged dangerously and the blister on his lip was ripe as a grape. His dirty breakfast dishes hadn’t been cleared away and the ashtray was already half full. He slammed the phone and wiped his sweaty face with a handkerchief. “When Jiki and Mizo get back, we’re all going for a driv
e to the quarry.” He said this without glancing up, as if his gruffness disguised shame.

  “When did Uncle Yutaka call?”

  “I don’t know. An hour ago.”

  Nanashi stared at the top of Koma’s skull where the hair was relentlessly thinning. “Are we sure about this?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Uncle was clear. We take him to the quarry.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay with you? Our orders meet with your approval?” Koma stuffed the slips into his coat pocket. “Go on. Get the fuck away from me. You’re giving me a headache. Hold on. Get those for me.” He pointed at the slips scattered around his feet and glowered while Nanashi crouched, leaning under the table, and scooped them into his hand. “Okay, okay. Give them here. Now beat it.”

  Nanashi checked his watch. He snapped his fingers at one of the young waiters loitering about and ordered him to shine his shoes. Normally, he shined his own shoes, ironed his own clothes. The kid’s indolence, his casual jocularity, irritated him. He phoned Yuki and apologized immediately for waking her. She mumbled with exhaustion, wondered if he’d be home soon. Her boss was being an asshole. He laughed and told her it was going around, and promised to pick her up at the end of her next shift. Her answers were vague and far apart, so he said goodbye, made kissing noises, and broke the connection. The kid shining his shoes smirked before averting his gaze. Nanashi toyed with the idea of kicking him in the throat, making him an example for the other little punks. That’s what Amida or Haru would’ve done. Instead, he didn’t tip.

  * * *

  They got on the road again -- same arrangement as the previous day. This time, no one talked. Nanashi sensed the change in his associates -- they were strung tight now that word of Uncle Yutaka’s decision had passed among them. Koma drove with both hands, white-knuckling the wheel. Haru put on his headphones and stared out the window. Muzaki seemed oblivious to the tension. He yawned and leaned back, hands folded behind his neck, eyes half closed.